A Twelve Hour Tour

(Written on the morning of 07/08/07.)

Tristan, Jim, and I spent nearly 12 hours sight-seeing. I spent $50 and although Tristan wanted to press on and take the Staten Island Ferry, I was spent financially and physically. I dozed on the subway ride to Brooklyn and I slept shortly after we returned.

Someone put a crumpled, white piece of paper under my windshield wiper blade and I'm curious about that. Hopefully it's not a signal or a sign. I guess that's bound to happen at some point.

Some literature describes a fleeting sense of flow. Kids may characterize the same thing on immediate reflection as, 'That was fun!' We were there yesterday as we wandered the streets of Manhattan.

Jim and Tristan had divergent sight-seeing goals so I worried some wondering how things would work out. Jim wanted to see the typical tourist spots and Tristan wanted an intimate look into the City by finding a hole in the wall, ethnic restaurant to eat at. But all three of us had common interest in girl watching since on any given, busy street in Manhattan, the population of our New Hampshire town walks by every hour or so.

First, they bought all you can ride subway passes (I learned the economy of these passes since I first arrived) and went to the financial district in lower Manhattan. Wall Street fit into Jim's sight-seeing ambition. And of course, we used the local ATM and avoided fees.

We found a diner to eat breakfast, and wandered Wall Street and the World Trade Center site. Afterwards, we took subways close to Washington Square Park so we could sight-see, or in other words: girl watch. Action wasn't heavy there so we wandered Grenwich Village which seemed to sleep yet so we quickly changed gears and took the subway to 34th Street just outside of Madison Square Garden.

We playfully followed Jim through the tourist crowded streets and I told him, 'It's all about Jim today. Maybe we can just cross intersections with the 'Walk' signal and see where we end up'. Eventually, we hit many of the big tourist sites such as Madison Square Garden, Times Square, Rockerfeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, the NBC Studios, and much more.

Jim thought a movie would be nice to sit in air-conditioned comfort so we went to a Loews Theater and watched Live Free or Die Harder, a delightful film. I liked the humor, the story, the dramatic conflict, and I even laughed out loud several times.

Suddenly the afternoon waned so we followed Tristan next to Little Italy and had a marginal (in my opinion) Italian dinner. Afterwards in a nearby subway station, we looked at a map and slowly, sleepily debated our next move. The consensus was to return to the apartment and rest rather than wait for the sunset and take the Staten Island ferry after dark.

We returned to Brooklyn. Tristan stopped for food. In the apartment, everyone dozed and I slept soundly.